Free Angel Hunt by Mike Ripley Page B

bar after a quick word with the barman. Of course, if you get it wrong, she’s a terrorist and you’ve got about ten seconds to finish your drink.)
    After she got out, more or less decent now, I readjusted the rear-view mirror back to its driving position and followed her in.
    Simon was on one phone at his desk, grunting a lot but not saying much. I motioned to the other phone, and he waved me go ahead, so I parked a buttock on the edge of the desk and fished out a scrap of paper – a cigarette paper – from my wallet. The number pencilled on it was Zaria’s workplace. Or so Zaria had assured me.
    â€˜Aurora Corona,’ said a fruity voice.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Aurora Corona Rest Home. Who is this?’
    Where did they get a name like that? I thought that was a Mexican beer.
    â€˜Er ... I’d like to speak to …’
    â€˜No telephone calls accepted for residents –’ I wondered how long it had taken him to break the habit of saying ‘inmates’ – ‘during luncheon.’
    â€˜Actually, it was one of your staff I was –’
    â€˜I’m sorry –’ Oh no you weren’t – ‘but we do not accept personal calls until after four pm’
    â€˜But it’s important.’
    â€˜Who did you wish to speak to?’ he mellowed.
    â€˜Zaria.’
    â€˜Hmmm. Is it an emergency?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Are you a relative?’
    â€˜Yes. It’s family business.’
    â€˜Zaria who?’
    Oh shit.
    â€˜Pardon?’
    â€˜Which Zaria? We may have several on the staff.’
    You bastard.
    I hung up. That would teach me to pay more attention, to put names to phone numbers. Now they were unfashionable, maybe it would be okay to get a Filofax. No. Things weren’t that bad.
    Â 
    The Boozebuster went off without a hitch. The unsuspecting and very sloshed Mr Harding was bundled out of the pub and into the back of Armstrong with the four girls in various stages of undress. It was a bit of a squash, but he didn’t seem to mind, and I’d put on a tape of golden oldies (stuff from around 1985) for them to sing along to. Before we got to his office, he’d persuaded Kim and Eddie (with a fistful of notes) to come with him and start another party at his local wine-bar after he’d ‘cleared his desk.’ I took Jacqui and Frances back to Southwark and collected my wages from Simon.
    Then I headed north in the general direction of Redbridge to the Aurora Borealis Bide-A-Wee rest home, or whatever they called it, determined to get Zaria well sorted.
    The clever devil who’d answered the phone had said private calls after 4.00 pm, which I guessed would be a shift change for the staff. I remembered something Zaria had said about clocking on at 8.00 in the morning, and 8.00-to-4.00 seemed a reasonable working day. Well, to some people. To me, it sounded depressing.
    With the traffic thickening and the street lights coming on, it would be after 4.00 when I got there. London traffic now moves at an average speed of 11 miles per hour. Cabs carrying Sherlock Holmes did better than that, and you couldn’t grow roses using Armstrong’s exhaust.
    I was thinking about life, the universe and how much I liked Kim Carnes’s voice (a voice that makes you regret moving to filter cigarettes) on the tape-deck when I began to conjure up a mental picture of Billy Tuckett. At first it was back in university days again, and then, suddenly, him lying all bloody in Sunil’s bathtub, and it wasn’t even funny bizarre any more.
    It wasn’t a vision or a psychic experience or a message from above. (Falling over is God’s way of telling you the bar’s about to shut, in my book.) Maybe it was delayed shock. Maybe it was drugs. I made a note to get some.
    I don’t know what it was. I just found Armstrong heading towards Lucy Scarrott.
    On the speakers, Kim Carnes was feeling it in the air and